This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon.
Absence | Business | Evil | Man | Speech | World | Business |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
Peace is not just the absence of war. It involves mutual respect and confidence between peoples and nations. It involves collaboration and binding agreements. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith.
Absence | Confidence | Faith | Nations | Peace | Respect | War | Respect |
The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.
Absence | Appearance | Life | Life | Practice | Reconciliation |
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
The passion of desire is an agitation of the soul caused by the spirits which dispose it to wish for the future the things which it represents to itself as agreeable. Thus we do not only desire the presence of the absent good, but also the conservation of the present, and further, the absence of evil, both of that which we already have, and of that which we believe we might experience in time to come.
Absence | Agitation | Conservation | Desire | Evil | Experience | Future | Good | Passion | Present | Soul | Time |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
The absence of the ignorant is never regretted.
Absence |
Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
Absence | Difficulty | Grace | Pain |
Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
Absence | Experience | Knowledge | Will | Happiness |
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Respect is not fear and awe; it...is the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
To speak of love is not "preaching," for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
Absence | Faith | Insight | Love | Means | Nature | Need | Reason |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.